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Retro Review: Fable

One of the best Adventure Role Playing Games on Xbox, Fable is a beautiful open-world fantasy game with elements that couldn’t compare to other games. Fable was so unique where almost every move you made had its own consequences good or bad. You truly molded your life with the actions you made from a child to an elder.

Humble Beginnings In the world of Albion there’s always evil about, whether it’s your average everyday bandits stealing goods from the farm, giant hornets terrorizing a picnic, annoying hobbes causing havoc and chaos, or an even greater evil that threatened all of the world and only one hero could take them down. Although there are many heroes in the world of Albion, some heroes can turn out to be great and powerful, evil or good, arrogant or modest. In fact there is a guild of heroes where people train and learn how to become heroes, but even if you are a student from the guild you still must prove to people that you’re a hero, you must earn their respect. As a child growing up you already make small choices that can lead you into becoming an evil or good hero, eventually growing up and either correcting the evil of your ways and becoming more good or vice versa.

Gameplay Fable’s gameplay is intensely different compared to most roleplay games. As simple village boy making ‘innocent’ decisions can lead to you becoming evil or good, from smashing a farmer’s barrels or protecting them. As you get older you’ll see there are even more elements that lead to your rise as an evil or good person, such as eating live chicken or being a vegan. Seriously, eating tofu and vegetables will lead you to being a good person, but eating well also leads to being physically fit and well. As your character ages, you see their hair becoming grey and skin wrinkling, sunburns and battle scars.

The armor you wear affects villagers. Will they fear you, or look up to you or even love you? The ladies seem to love your mutton chops and bald head, even some of the men. You can perhaps gift a special lady some flowers and even propose to them. Fable is literally a role playing game, you create a life with your hero and you watch them grow as they get through their mission and fulfill their destiny. Battles are engaging, fun, and intense. You fight your battles in your own style, are you a rogue who can sneak past enemies and get a perfect headshot on them with your, maybe you’re a warrior who’ll hammer their heads open, or perhaps a mage who can unleash their fury electrocuting every enemy rapidly. Of course why not be all three. You level up depending on three major factors, skill, strength, and will. Depending on how often you use the factors you gain more experience in that area. For example, if you plan to become an all powerful mage, using willpower as often as you can will lead to you gaining more experience in that section along with general experience which can go into all three factors while leveling up. Each factor has so many different options while leveling up and it almost feels endless.

What Makes Fable a Classic? Something unique about Fable was when choose side quests, each quest had a good version and evil version. If there is a quest to protect a farm from bandits, you also had a choice to help out the bandits instead. You were also able to boast or bet with villagers and do daring things such as go into battle with armor for extra gold and more attention which is crucial as hero. After some quests you received a trophy whether it was the head of your enemy or a special item from someone, you’d have to show it off to villagers so they know that you were the one who slayed or conquered something. It was never a situation of you’re the hero and everyone knew that, you had to earn that respect by protecting people or killing them and shoving it in their faces.

Fable is definitely different than the Fable games we have now, and because of that it’s worth checking out. It’s quite a gem, a good one at that. This was one of the most amazing role playing games I’ve ever come across as a gamer. Creating your own hero good or evil, earning your respect instead of just being ‘the hero’ that everyone supposedly knew. Villagers with interesting quirky personalities, stories that traders would tell you as you protected them, an intense storytelling that felt vivid and caught your attention. A roleplaying game at it’s finest at its time and still is today. While you can still play the Xbox Original Fable, If visuals matter to you or it’s more convenient for you, there is Fable Anniversary which is basically an HD Remastered Fable done in the unreal engine.